For a new student, feelings of hopelessness or being lost are all too common. It isn’t easy for transfer students to know what they’re doing on those first few days in an unfamiliar building (or in Coronado’s case, several buildings). Where is this room? How do I get there? Who are these people? What am I doing? Those are all thoughts that I had my first few days, and it would be easy to assume that every new student has had at least one of said questions. This feeling gets magnified the later in the school year you switch, as it appears that everyone has the school figured out but you. Almost every new student has felt one of these at one time or another, so how did they get over it? This is my account of a midyear transfer, as well as big differences between schools.
Transferring from a small, close-knit academy with a strict uniform policy to a 4A public school with almost no dress code provided a fair bit of culture shock. My old school was comfortably small, with less than eighty students in the sophomore class. Compare that with the hundreds of students attending Coronado, and it’s easy to see how a new student could feel lost when coming from a similar school. There is a large difference in how classrooms operate and how students interact with one another, with the smaller school being much more personal as everyone knew each other. A new student wouldn’t feel this after coming from a larger high school, but this is my experience.
One of the smaller differences between another, smaller school and Coronado is the dress code. There are several different high schools in the Springs with a similar dress code to Coronado, but coming from a school with strict dress code rules the difference is significant. I feel like some take a loose dress code for granted, but I know I probably never will.
Teaching style and staff attitude is by far the biggest change coming to Coronado. Due to the fact that my old school was much smaller, the atmosphere was different. However, it does feel like a large number of the teachers and staff at Coronado are generally less enthusiastic about teaching and helping students. More faculty members than I expected are just not that into their jobs, and it shows. Not all teachers are like this, just a select few.
Switching between schools was fairly easy otherwise. Students and some staff members were mostly happy to show a new student around the large, fairly complicated Coronado campus, and the library staff was able to assign me a laptop fairly quickly with only a few problems.
However, the few problems that do happen have a huge effect. Teachers don’t seem to understand that if a student transfers, then the student wasn’t there for old assignments. For over a week I have had to battle F’s in almost every class simply because the teachers graded assignments I wasn’t even in this school for. Even after addressing the issue, several teachers took their sweet, sweet time with getting it fixed (I’ve been here almost three weeks now and some teachers still haven’t fixed the issue). This causes several problems, especially for athletes or people transferring at the end of a quarter/semester.
So how is it to transfer to Coronado? The most simple word I can use is irksome, especially in the middle of the semester. The campus is decently sized and does take some time to get used to, but it doesn’t take that long to memorize. The attitude difference of the teachers when compared to other schools is frustrating, and that directly leads to the worst part of transferring which is the grades. But once that gets figured out, then everything is great. Just remember to let new students know about the a/b lunch schedule, and that will be great for them.